


the force is with her too

by romanitas



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, M/M, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanitas/pseuds/romanitas
Summary: It's after Scarif. War makes orphans and children still need homes. Chirrut and Baze raise a daughter as the Rebellion keeps fighting.





	

**Author's Note:**

> original prompt was just: chirrut and baze raise their adopted daughter together

It’s Baze who finds her. The girl is no older than five or six, small and closed off, with eyes like a hawk and dark brown skin. She has a very long and very tough staring contest with Baze for an introduction, a contest she wins, and when he asks for her name, all she says is “I don’t have one.”

When Chirrut finds him later on the rebel base, he smiles faintly. She’s sleeping against him, curled into his much larger frame. “She is overflowing with peace,” he says.

“She’s sleeping,” Bazes replies dryly.

“That’s when you are most at peace, too,” Chirrut smiles, and he sits down on the other side. Baze just grunts, but quietly, lest he wake up the child. “What’s her name?”

“She said she didn’t have one.”

“That won’t do! We’ll have to ask her what she would like to be called once she wakes up.”

Refugees aren’t common on Yavin 4, but they aren’t rare either. They’re among those most likely to join the Rebellion in the end, too angry at the Empire to consider attempting anything close to a normal life. Most of the time they get shuffled in, stick around for a few days, then get shipped out to a different planet. Baze wonders how long this one has been here, because it’s ill likely she’s anything other than a girl who has lost her home. He knows child soldiers, and she doesn’t have the aura of one.

She sleeps quite comfortably against him, for far longer than he anticipated. Chirrut sits with them the entire time giving the illusion of meditation, but Baze knows he’s mostly thinking. He hasn’t heard one mumble of the Force. Jyn passes by them after about fifteen minutes and does a double take, and Baze just raises his eyebrow. She shrugs and carries on, the mantra she’s taken up since escaping Scarif even though she has become one of the fiercest loyalists to the Rebellion.

The girl wakes up a few minutes later, blinking herself awake. She ducks in a little closer towards Baze when she spots Chirrut has joined them, but he only smiles at her. “My name is Chirrut,” he says with ease. “I see you’ve met Baze, though I suspect he neglected to share that information with you.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t ask.”

“That’s fair! Are you hungry?”

She looks taken aback by the question and sits up, rubbing her eyes. “Is it dinner time?”

“Close enough. Besides, we have connections. We can get you some of the best food this base has to offer.”

Baze bristles. “That’s cheating.”

“Heroes do not cheat. Therefore, we are not cheating. I’m hungry too. Let’s go.”

It’s not that Baze isn’t used to kids. Back when there was still something to guard on Jedha, there were always kids around, and his height made for an excellent climbing tower. He knows how to have a conversation. He’s just still trying to figure out how to be a hero, and interacting with children didn’t quite feel like a part of that. The three of them meander towards the kitchens, and though she doesn’t give them a name or stop watching their every move, she does seem to retain some of that peace.

-

One week later, she’s still hovering around. Chirrut has taken to playing hide and seek, which she finds utterly fascinating due to his lack of ability to conventionally seek. She smiles at him and rushes around to hide, completely surprised every time he finds her. She comes to find him at dinner time every day, or perhaps she comes to find Baze, or both, but it’s not like they eat separately that it matters. She sits between them and kicks her legs as she eats. Her demeanor is still small and closed off, but she’s not as sullen.

“What would you like to be called?” Chirrut asks one day.

“I don’t know my name,” she says, much more matter-of-factly than the reserved nature the first time.

“I didn’t ask that,” Chirrut says gently. “I asked what you _want_ to be called.”

Her mouth opens in a little ‘o’ like she’s been surprised again. Baze chimes in. “You can think about it. We don’t need an answer right now.”

“Okay,” she says and goes back to eating without another word.

-

It’s another week before she gives them something. Chirrut is exercising and Baze is half dozing when she finds them, and all she says is: “Nira.”

“I like it,” Chirrut says immediately, beaming.

“It’s a good one,” Baze agrees. She laughs and squeezes both of their hands before running off.

-

Chirrut and Baze, initially, stayed on Yavin 4 out of convenience. They were both gravely wounded on Scarif. Chirrut almost didn’t make it. There were a lot of burns going around. There’s a burn scar diagonal across Chirrut’s chest from the explosion, and it dips in a line around his hip. Baze has one too, but it’s a smaller patch on his back, one Chirrut idly touches sometimes, like he’s trying to imagine erasing it from existence. Baze knows they went to Scarif for Jedha’s revenge as well as loyalty to Jyn, and he knows Chirrut has a harder time remembering all he’s done.

They got the plans. The Rebels destroyed the Death Star while the Rogue One crew faded in and out of consciousness, healing from their battle wounds. It should be over. But Jedha lingers. It doesn’t feel like enough, and when the Alliance offers them transport to another system as reward for their help on Scarif, it’s in near unison that they decline, with the winds of Jedha in their ears.

-

“Are you aware you’ve gotten a shadow?” Cassian asks, glancing at the girl playing nearby them. It has now been four weeks since Nira found them, and she spends more time with them than she doesn’t. This is Cassian’s version of an icebreaker.

Baze’s expression is flat, Chirrut is sure, and it makes him smile. “Is that what it was? It was so hard to tell and Baze refused to describe it for me. I was kept in the dark.”

He knows Cassian is rolling his eyes, just like he knows Baze is still sighing internally. “She can’t stay here much longer. They’ve found a place for some of the refugee children. As soon as the details are finalized, they will work on transport and re-homing. I’d give it a few days. They need to all be out of here before we are.”

Chirrut can tell a lot of things about Cassian, but he can’t tell if this is to give them preparation to say goodbye or to give them time to _think_. Maybe it’s both. Cassian hates being unprepared for anything.

“He was asking if we’re going to keep her,” Baze says after the man walks away, undoubtedly to gossip with Jyn and Bodhi. Not that he’d call it gossip so much as sharing information, but Chirrut knows the difference even if Cassian refuses to acknowledge it.

“Are we?” he asks, his voice light as it is serious. He finds he wants to, but he’s not about to admit so out loud until he knows for sure that Baze is on the same page. It seems like they might be, but he’s been wrong on that before.

Baze goes quiet, and Chirrut knows he’s thinking, so he waits. He never has any issue waiting for Baze. Nira plays around nearby with a few sticks, swinging them around like she’s trying to emanate the two of them combined and fighting invisible enemies.

“Can we?” is what he asks, and now it’s Chirrut’s turn to think.

He never much thought about what it would be like to truly care for a child. Jedha was a hard place, and it was enough to worry about keeping himself and Baze alive. Though they haven’t gone on any real missions since Scarif, the Rebellion _is_ their home now. There are people here they’d fight for. Somehow it seems the better place to raise a child, even if they’re about to trade one base for another. Someone will be there to catch her if they die.

“What we can or cannot do has never stopped us before,” Chirrut says, and he can tell Baze cracks the tiniest of smiles.

When the refugee ship leaves three days later, Nira is not on it. She gets a cot in their room instead, and Baze has never seen her smile as much as she does when she dives headfirst into the blankets.

-

“I’ve never been an aunt before,” says Jyn, squatting down to get at eye level with Nira. Bodhi hovers, curious, and Cassian stands back, arms crossed.

“I’ve never had an aunt before,” replies Nira.

Jyn doesn’t laugh, but it’s a close thing. Her mouth twitches. Not once in her life has she ever thought about having her own children. Not necessarily because she doesn’t like them – it was just impractical on too many levels. “I guess we can both learn then, right?”

She offers her hand to shake. Nira considers for a moment, before nodding like she’s just signed a contract and eagerly shaking Jyn’s hand.

“I’m Bodhi,” he says, and he finally leans down too. He looks less anxious now about somehow messing it all up.

“Are you my uncle?”

He pauses, and Jyn nudges him with her elbow. Bodhi smiles, softly, like there’s never been a greater question asked. He holds out his own hand in mimicry of Jyn, and Nira shakes his too. “I suppose I could be.”

Nira looks over at Cassian and her hesitation is clearer. It’s not that he’s overtly threatening, but Cassian does have a way of holding himself sometimes that’s imposing. Of all of them, he is the one who most embodies the Rebellion.

“That’s Cassian,” Jyn says without missing a beat. “He’s probably your uncle too.”

-

The first time Nira says the word _dad_ , they both turn in her direction, not sure who she means. Her only response is to giggle shyly, before she runs and grabs Chirrut by the legs. “I wanted to try it,” she says.

Chirrut feels something deep and warm in his chest that he cannot name, but it is completely unrelated to the Force. Baze is rendered silent, his hand reaching out to pat Nira on the head while the other presses gently at Chirrut’s back. It’s the first time she calls them dad, and it’s the first time it really hits them that they have chosen to become her parents more than just simple caregivers.

“I like it,” Chirrut says later.

Baze is smiling. “Me too.”

-

Cassian finds Jyn hunched over a table, like she doesn’t want anyone to see what she’s doing – which is probably true. Jyn never likes people to see what she’s doing if she can help it. He raps twice on the open door, just to let her know he’s there.

“What.”

It’s not even a real question. He doesn’t smile, but the amusement is in his face anyway. She isn’t annoyed, just focused, and he’s learned to tell the difference. “You weren’t at lunch.”

She sits up and looks back at him, face scrunched up. “Oh. No wonder I was hungry.”

He comes around without preamble and finds a pile of scrap fabrics, some of which have started to be sewn together. He didn’t know she could sew, but it’s not a surprise given her life. He knows how too, after all.

“She needs a good toy,” Jyn says, answering the question he didn’t even know he’d wanted to ask. “I used to make some of my own, back on Lah’mu.”

There’s a silence that stretches on, but it isn’t awkward or tense. Neither of them are the most talkative of people. The lack of pressure to speak is a comfort. Cassian walks over to watch what she’s doing, and Jyn continues without issue. They’re getting better at this thing called openness.

“She likes blue,” he says and pushes a scrap of bright blue fabric closer towards the lumpy center of the doll’s origins. Jyn smiles and doesn’t question how he figured it out.

-

“Tell me a story,” Nira whispers, after all the lights are out. Baze opens his eyes instantly, but he’s never been the storyteller. Chirrut wears the badge with pride, and he’s already climbing out of bed and making his way towards Nira in the dark. It’s their last night in this room, but not the first time they’ve needed to leave with the rebel base.

“Would you like to hear about the jedi again?”

“As long as it’s a new story.”

“It’s an old story,” Chirrut says, and the turn of phrase is aimed directly at Baze, who is far too used to these things to do anything except throw a pillow in their direction. Nira laughs and whacks Chirrut with her own. “Look what you started!” he chastises.

“The blame is entirely yours,” Baze says without any real ire.

Chirrut leans in, his voice in a stage whisper, and sighs dramatically. “Your dad doesn’t always appreciate my wit.”

“Your wit dried out just like the planet it was born on.”

They’ve come a long way these few months, being able to speak on Jedha in a more lighthearted way. It still exists as home in their heads even after a year, as long as they don’t let all their memories be soiled by the hurt of it. One day, Baze thinks he’d like to tell Nira all about Jedha, all about the Jedi Temple and their place as Guardians. She loves the stories and runs around playing with imaginary lightsabers. She’s already started repeating _I’m one with the force, the force is with me_ , both when she’s scared and when she’s happy. Baze isn’t sure she recognizes the gravity of it just yet, but with a father like Chirrut, he knows she will one day.

He would have liked to take Nira to Jedha. The ache will never truly go away, no matter how much they carve out a new home for themselves together on each new planet. The air is always different, sometimes muggy and wet, sometimes crisp and dry, all against echoes of sand and rock. Instead all she has is stories – they’re good ones, things he’s proud of and things he’s not, but he doesn’t want to hide anything from her. The world is not broken up into good and bad, even if Nira is starting to realize her fathers are recognized as heroes.

-

Her favorite spot in the whole world is sitting on top of Baze’s shoulders. It’s harder as she gets older, but she learns to climb using all her limbs and reaching the top of his tall body becomes second nature.

“I’m going to be as tall as you one day.”

Baze smiles. “You’ve got a long way to go. Perhaps dad would be the better goal.”

“No, I want to be taller than him!”

“Make sure you tell him that.”

“Okay,” Nira agrees, and he can feel the way she stretches her arms up high, trusting him entirely to stop her from falling if she loses her balance. Baze feels even taller when she’s sitting up there.

Newer rebels do a double take when they seem him walk by like this, but they never question it. There’s always business to attend to, because the Empire never stops either.

If there is one thing that Nira has changed about him and Chirrut, it’s how they don’t always go together on certain missions anymore. Scarif was too close a call, and neither of them want to leave Nira abandoned a second time. Chirrut is away right now, with Bodhi and Jyn, on a recovery run through some imperial controlled territory; it’s another temporary home on a temporary base, but the Rebel Alliance still needs supplies. Nira is already planning what to give him as a welcome home gift. She isn’t unaware of the dangers, no child like her could possibly be, but Baze likes to imagine she has a good, soft life with them, compared to what she might have had. She isn’t sheltered, and she’s already held a blaster, but she can still do things like run for Chirrut when he comes back like it’s the most important thing in the universe.

They’re doing good, Baze likes to think, and they have come such a long way.

-

Cassian doesn’t know how to feel about babysitting duty. In theory, it’s easy. He can keep a child alive on a secure rebel base and probably multitask while doing so. It’s the strange way hearing ‘uncle’ before ‘Cassian’ that never fails to make him feel like he’s in another galaxy, no matter how many times it happens.

He gets used to it though, like he does everything else, mostly because he starts to understand Nira like he comes to understand everyone he spends significant time with. He treats children like adults most of the time, because that’s the only way adults ever handled him at that age.

He always brings a new book with him on the datapads, whatever he can scrounge up about the jedi or some of the galaxy’s other greatest myths and legends. She likes when he reads out loud, and over time, he gets more comfortable doing so. He sometimes thinks she’s gotten a good read on him just like he figures out her.

“I bet your name will be famous one day too, just like dad and dad and Aunt Jyn and Uncle Bodhi.”

He puts his tone at curiosity, but it’s not a far stretch. “What makes you say that?” He’s an intelligence officer. Their identities aren’t supposed to be infamous, even though he already knows the Rogue One names are still whispered in victory prayers when the odds are looking fatal. His among them.

Nira gives him a look. “Do you really need me to explain it?”

Cassian lets out a laugh. It’s quiet and over in about two seconds, but it existed. “I suppose not,” he says, and he goes back to reading all the parts he knows she adores.

-

Hoth is cold. Almost unbearable so, to a man who grew up on Jedha. Nira doesn’t seem to mind, but she’s still at a good age where snow looks like fun more than trouble. Chirrut hates it, though he doesn’t admit it. He asks Nira to explain what it looks like all the time, and she gives him snowballs – both to touch and to throw.

Bodhi gets into many a snowball fight with her. Although he too is from Jedha, he finds the snow just as fascinating as Nira. The days go by, and he adjusts.

“Sometimes I miss Yavin 4,” Bodhi admits, while Nira and Chirrut are building a snowman. “But I’m not ready to stay in one place yet. Not until all this is over, at any rate.”

Baze finds he might feel the same, only later when he, Chirrut, and Nira are back in their quarters, he realizes the place isn’t as important as these two. Wherever the Rebel Base goes next, he’ll follow – for the sake of fighting the Empire as much as fighting for them.

But he definitely isn’t going to miss the frigid cold.

-

The doll Jyn made for Nira was named Aari, and they are more or less inseparable. The first few times Jyn sees Nira playing with it, she stops and stares, finding something almost amazing in the most mundane of games.

Nira likes to pretend Aari can use a lightsaber too. The sound effects got better once Luke Skywalker existed as a jedi. Jyn catches them one day, to the tune of Nira mimicking blaster noises and throwing Aari around.

Jyn gets an idea. It’s maybe a little stupid, but it’s not like she didn’t learn when she was that age, and she sort of thrives on stupid ideas. She should probably have asked Chirrut or Baze first, but she strolls up to Nira like a peer, which has probably helped them get along so well.

“Would you like to learn how to use a blaster?” she asks. Nira’s face lights up.

It’s the first major disagreement Baze and Chirrut have since taking her in. It’s surprising on which sides they fall.

“I don’t like it,” Baze says, arms crossed and line in his brow creased deep.

“Do you think I do?” Chirrut asks, his voice calm but challenging. “I would prefer she never pick up a single weapon, but you are a fool if you think she can avoid it.”

“She’s too young.”

“So were we.”

It doesn’t break anything. It’s just a tension as the conversation repeats itself a few times over a few days. Jyn avoids them both, worried she’s caused a rift, but they catch her checking in on Nira at least once a day.

It’s Bodhi who settles it. He’s sitting with them on lunch, while Cassian and Jyn have taken Nira to mend her doll. “I don’t see how it will change her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

They look at him in unison, and he blinks between them, contemplating who to look back at. “It’s all about our choices, right? That’s all anyone ever told me. She’s not going to up and join the rebellion just because she knows how to safely use a blaster. She may not even like it. But it might be worth talking to her about it before you decide anything.”

Chirrut smiles and Baze grunts. “Making fools of us both, Bodhi. Thank you,” Chirrut says.

Bodhi gives them a half smile and shrugs one shoulder. “You know who to ask if she wants to learn how to pilot a ship.”

-

Nira does ask. Not to actually fly it, but she’s so desperately curious about what Bodhi does when he flies her family places and apparently the blaster situation is enough to give her the confidence to go for it. She clambers up after him into an empty pilot’s seat, looking around with wonder like it’s the first time she’s ever seen the controls before – which isn’t entirely true, but she’s never had this much hands on access.

“Do you like being a pilot?” she asks, after he’s about halfway through the basics.

“Mostly,” he says. It’s far easier to talk to Nira than he ever would have thought. He spends the most time with her outside her parents, and he likes to share his own stories about Jedha with her. When he realizes she won’t be bothered by it, Bodhi tells her about his mother and his own childhood, and he likes to think it helps her create a broader pictures of her parents’ world. “Sometimes it can be quite scary, but peaceful flights can be very relaxing. I feel in control, you know? It’s important. I’m important.”

He doesn’t talk about being an Imperial cargo pilot, but she does ask him what people mean when they call him the Defector. He sees no reason not to, so he tells her – about how he used to work for the Empire before he realized he had to make a choice. Nira is starting to learn all about Scarif, and she’s a very smart child, so it’s not hard for her to pick up the pieces.

She gets up out of her seat and crawls into Bodhi’s lap. “You’re the best pilot,” she says firmly, like she has all the expertise and experience. She hesitates for a second. “Don’t tell Uncle Cassian.”

“It’s a secret. I swear.”

“Do you swear to the Force?”

He doesn’t laugh, though he thinks he might have once. Bodhi doesn’t put his faith in anything except the people around him, no matter how many times people tell him _may the force be with you_. “I swear to you,” he says instead, but it seems to satisfy her.

-

She doesn’t know when she was born, so they always celebrate the day she met them instead. No matter how many bases they shuffle between, even with moments of separation, her family always ends up in the same place – even if it’s only for a little while before they need to move locations again. Bodhi drowns her in presents when she turns nine, even if it’s mostly small useless trinkets he’s picked up all over the base. Jyn has made Aari the doll some new clothes. Cassian promises her he’s working on a gift, but it may take a while, and the tone of his voice just builds her anticipation.

“It better be worth it,” Chirrut says with a mockingly dire warning.

“I think it will be,” Cassian replies, the smile on his face faint and entirely meant to come across as mysterious.

One week later she meets Luke Skywalker.

“That’s totally unfair,” Jyn hisses.

“Completely!” Bodhi agrees. “You’re not supposed to make her forget every other present even exists!”

“I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me I should not have arranged her to meet him? That seems cruel.”

Jyn smacks Cassian’s shoulder then crosses her arms in a huff. They are Rogue One as a team, and their names are well known, the heroes who allowed the Death Star to be destroyed, but they aren’t jedi. It’s hard to beat a long lost jedi and the hope he brings to the Rebellion, though sometimes she thinks the Princess Leia would stand a chance. It’s just unfair of Cassian to use that connection to outshine them as gift-giver, but he looks almost smug about it the whole day.

“I want to be a jedi,” Nira admits later, curled up in bed between her dads, her voice full of wonder.

“I thought you wanted to be your father?” Chirrut says playfully.

“Of course I do,” she says. “I know I can’t _really_ be a jedi, but I like to think about it sometimes.”

“She does have your reflexes for combat,” Baze says idly, with a side of pride.

“How fortunate she also has my sense of humor and not yours.”

Nira giggles. She keeps talking about the encounter, but she talks about everything else too. All the ways she wants to dress Aari, the coolest part of Bodhi’s basket of presents. Each turn of phrase makes it clear how loved she is and how much she loves them all.

“What would we have done,” Baze starts the next morning, “If she was a jedi?”

Chirrut makes a thoughtful noise. They’ve both seen all Luke does for the Rebellion, the way his reputation gets whispered around and the image being built around him. He is as inspiring as he is terrifying. It’s already a legacy in the making far different from their own. “She would still be our daughter.”

Baze snorts. “You can’t be saying everything would still be like it is.”

“No. But in all the most important ways, I like to think it would be.”

-

Raising Nira is hard enough in all the normal ways, but set against the backdrop of Rebellion it adds more. Being a parent doesn’t stop Chirrut or Baze from wanting to fight – if anything it makes them want to fight harder than they ever did out of revenge for Jedha, though it may be a close thing. Cassian reminds them not to give their entire selves over to the Rebellion, and they take his warning to heart. He is a good man at his core, but they know what fighting against the Empire has done to him. He still disappears for weeks at a time, leaving Nira anxious until he returns. Sometimes Jyn joins her when she’s around, and they distract each other.

There is an illusion of safety being on the rotating home base, but it’s broken often the longer the war goes on. Chirrut will leave for a mission, then Baze will. They don’t go deep into enemy territory like Cassian or Jyn, and they don’t pilot ships with a glaring target on their sides like Bodhi, but it doesn’t make their work any less dangerous. He has still killed Stormtroopers and come home to hug Nira with those same hands. The Rebellion doesn’t wait for children, even if it sometimes raises them.

Baze can still remember the attack on Hoth, the way he lifted Nira without a second thought as he jumped into a ship to evacuate, leaving most of their things behind as Bodhi took off. Jyn was with them; Cassian was not, and she spent the entire flight clutching the kyber crystal at her neck.  He and Chirrut keep a bag, full of the most important things, including Aari when Nira isn’t playing with her. It’s a reminder that home still fluctuates. The Rebellion moves as it needs to. A bed is a bed, but that sense of settlement can only be truly had once the Empire is gone.

Baze refuses to think of a galaxy where the Empire reigns forever.

Nira is not the only child in the rebellion. She has friends, other refugee children who never left, other officers who had their own children – though those latter numbers are much smaller. She is growing up surrounded by it just like he did, just like Chirrut and Bodhi, like Jyn and Cassian, only he hopes the support she gets makes for a more loving one than she might have gotten had he not found her that day all those years ago. She has not been conscripted. She doesn’t fight, even if she sees the wreckage.

It’s so hard to imagine his life without her in it now.

“We made the right choice,” he says, laying in the dark of their room.

“I don’t know what you mean in this case. Should I agree or disagree just to be difficult?” Chirrut replies.

“Agree, unless you’ve decided Nira isn’t our daughter without my knowledge.”

“You’re thinking about the Rebellion again.”

“Aren’t we always?”

The silence sits between them after, not uncomfortable. Chirrut reaches out, and Baze takes his hand without needing to search. Their fingers wind together.

“We’ve made a lot of different choices over the years,” Chirrut says, “Not all of them good ones. But I believe the Force is on our side, and I believe in our ability to channel that into ourselves.”

“You always have to come back to the Force, don’t you?” Baze sighs, but his tone is all affection. He lost his faith a long time ago, but moments like these almost make him miss it.

“I never need to come back to it. It’s always there,” he replies, squeezing Baze’s hand. “Nira is not in our lives simply because the Force wills it. We made that choice and I will never regret it. My life is always with you. Sometimes it does us well to change it up.”

Baze snorts, but he knows Chirrut doesn’t mean it to sound so flippant.

“The Rebellion is all around us, but it doesn’t mean children do not need families. In fact, I’d say it means they especially need them. We fought for Jedha. Now we fight for Nira, too.”

Baze kisses Chirrut’s knuckles and falls asleep to the sound of Nira snoring.

-

When the Death Star is destroyed for the second time, Nira is ten. She’s always understood the war going on around her, but the loud, unbridled joy is something she truly, fully grasps. She is also alone when it happens, left on base with a droid for company, because her entire family left to be part of it, but when word gets around she doesn’t hesitate to leave her rooms. She runs through the base as it echoes with cheering and laughter, her own lending itself to the volume, and she hugs as many strangers as familiar faces.

The first to arrive back is Bodhi, whose name is chanted with reverence as he exits the fighter he flew himself. He always worried his background as an imperial cargo pilot would one day get the better of him, but instead it helps to elevate him. Bodhi Rook, the hero who rejected the Empire and survived many a suicide mission in the pilot’s seat. He lifts Nira up as soon as he sees her, spinning around in a hug and completely unable to speak about how happy he is in this moment. He is irreplaceable and important to the Rebellion, but to Nira he’s always just been an uncle she adored with her whole heart. He’s never quite used to the praise, but it’s easier to accept the affection and love from her than it is strangers who only know how to say his name like a war cry. 

“Screw the Empire,” he tells her.

She beams. “They never deserved you.”

It takes a few hours, but Jyn and Cassian return next. Nira doesn’t know where they went, but out of everyone, she always knows the least about what they’ve done for the Rebellion. They would both go fight for days at a time, sometimes even longer as soldiers were jettisoned around the galaxy. Jyn’s arm is in a sling, but it doesn’t stop Nira from hugging her leg while Jyn’s eyes water. Cassian holds her tightly, thinking about how no more children will have a childhood like his. They leave her with Bodhi and go off to sit together quietly in a corner, heads bowed together in a quiet but no less relentless joy over the victory.

“No more Death Stars,” Jyn whispers, and Cassian kisses her forehead.

Her fathers don’t return until the evening, which should worry her, but Nira thinks she’d know if there was bad news. The Rebellion is bursting with a happy chaos that any sign of awfulness would be clear as day. She also thinks she would feel it. _I’m one with the Force, the Force is with me._

When they finally come back, it’s after dinner, and Baze is limping, leaning on Chirrut for support. Nira runs to them with a worried and happy cry. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Baze says as she buries her face in his chest. Chirrut rests his hand on her head, his face bruised and bloody but wrinkled from smiling.

“The future is all yours, Nira,” he says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head, then kisses Baze, just as fireworks explode overhead. Nira laughs with wonder, and Chirrut thinks they must have done well if she can make a sound like that, after everything the universe has tried to throw at all of them. It’s not totally over, not yet, but for the first time it feels like a decisive victory. The Emperor and Vader are dead. The Imperial forces are scrambled and suffering. The Alliance is stronger than it ever was. They can win. They _will_ win.

They have years ahead of them now. It feels like a real hope.

**Author's Note:**

> star wars fic is really intimidating to write, yo


End file.
